Opinions on back-sweetening mead

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Sunshine78

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So about a year ago I started a mead experiment. I wanted to make something with a kick, dark, medium dry with a hint of vanilla. I only do small batch, as the family is small and I don't want to end up with 50 bottles of something horrible. So for my 1 gallon brew I used 1kg heather honey, 300g morello cherries, 2 all spice berries, one and half quills of cinnamon, five cloves and one split vanilla bean as well as two small kali mirch chillies. I used Mangrove Jacks mead yeast and fast forward to now, I have an incredible looking mead. Blood red, a heady aroma of heather honey and spring blossoms. However, taste wise I'm not happy yet. It is dry, chili forward not hot but a definitive warmth to it. However, it's lacking depth. Hence my question, how can I back-sweeten it while also giving it depth and a silky mouthfeel.
My idea would be a dark honey, more vanilla or tonga bean and sweet cinnamon, maybe toasted oak?

What is your opinion? How can I improve this mead?
 
i like the dark honey, vanilla, and oak. i think those will add flacvor depth and mouth feel
i would hold off on the cinnamon its powerful. also it sounds like it will need a lot of time. like years.
 
It should be around 10.5% ABV, so that helps with the mouthfeel.
I'm a big fan of using oak and would start there before back sweetening. You can then tailor the sweetening amount based on what the oak has done when you decide to pull it from the mead.

Once you have that, see where you think it needs improvements. Cinnamon is somethin g that you need to taste about on a daily basis as it is very easy to overshoot that flavor and takes a while to fade if you get too much. You can also bench trial acid adjustments if you think it needs it. Use measured volumes of the mead and weighed acid additions to try and find the sweet spot/type of acid that helps balance it. You can then scale up additions to you gallon amount.
 
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